Master Vauxall sat resplendent on a green upholstered chair with long armrests. The room was large and elegantly beautified with neat red carpets and curtains. He told Ashviel and Kael to take their seats on the armrests by his sides.
After a little pleasantry, he proceeded to the matter at hand.
"I sent for you to talk to you about your progress in magic. While you have a slightly strong magic power, your control is extremely weak."
Kael nodded as he related that to his experience with Smythe. The brawny boy could have defeated him if he had not used a basting force. He used to pride himself on wind Rek maneuvers, but his encounter with Smythe proved that he was still a long way from achieving efficient control.
"Blue Beard prefers a slower road to power, and while I will admit that his methods provide mages a better control at a young age, I will argue that it take a lot of time, and I have little time, especially since the students in question are you two."
"Two of us?" asked Ashviel.
"Remember that you both gained magic paths through a direct shot from me. This is a very rare technique, unknown to even many a powerful mage. Students consider themselves extremely lucky to have the circuit-forging potion, and as such, most of them spend decades trying to become mages with circulation techniques. Blue Beard's students, including this insolent Ginx, are no exceptions. Blue Beard has given them the potion, but their magic circuits are far weaker compared to yours. There's however an advantage to this: since they have a smaller amount of Rek, they easily attain a higher level of dexterity controlling only a sliver of Rek."
He paused briefly, as if he was expecting questions, but his two students only listened raptly. Ashviel pondered shortly, wondering what have caused the discord between his master and the instructor.
Master Vauxall continued. "I brought you to Blue Beard's academy to become stronger, as I'll not be with you for much longer. Don't worry, he's among the mages I can trust. You will stay with him for half a decade, give or take a few months. During these years, I'll want you to ascend quickly, learning everything you can from the Blue Beard and his knights."
Ashviel's face fell when the master revealed his intentions of leaving them with his old friend. He wished he could do something, but he knew that for some reasons best known to the master, he wanted to go far away. Kael exhaled forcefully as he also realized that there was no way about it. He remembered his short encounter with Kyra and concluded that the years at Lord Blue Beard's place might not be very bad.
"So," he said at last, "we'll improve our trainings by using minute amounts of Rek."
"That you will do," answered Master Vauxall, and a sly smile formed on his lips. "And these," he continued, bringing out two red balls from his pockets, "you will use as well."
The balls were small and though irregularly shaped, they had a weird luster.
"Rek crystals," said Master Vauxall.
"Rek crystals?" repeated the young mages in unison. As Ashviel peered closely, he saw that their shapes put aside, the balls were more of crystals than of balls.
"There is an important intermittent stage between the passage of Rek into the portals and the actual release of Rek. If you manage to string pieces of this intermittent Rek together, refining them times and times over, you create an atom of a Rek crystal. If you repeat the whole process again, another atom comes into being, and so forth, until you form a crystal as these ones in my hand. You expel the atoms slowly, and instead of being manifested, they cluster to form a mass of pure Rek crystal. Like this"; Master Vauxall said and a crystal formed in his hands almost immediately.
Excited by the new discovery, they both tried to create crystals of their Rek. Master Vauxall expressed his characteristic hilarity at their failed attempts. "Do you think it will come so easily? He asked. "For you, a single atom will take hours of extreme concentration to develop."
Ashviel understood this immediately, if he was going to sew pieces of intermittent Rek together, then he was going to exercise a very high level of control. Master Vauxall had always told them to utilize Rek not as a weapon, but as an integral part of one's body, such that it will require little effort to use it. All these point at improving their control of the form of energy.
Master Vauxall went on with his speech. "You have so much to learn, yet so little time to learn them. I'll give you some more scrolls today, and you should be able to understand the concept well enough from them. The rest will depend on your determination and concentration." He extended the two crystals in his hands. "When you create Rek crystals, your perception and control of Rek improves sharply with time."
The young mages understood that quite fairly. "But what will become of the crystal at the end of the day?" Ashviel asked.
"Excellent question," observed Master Vauxall. "After you create them, you absorb them back into your body, and the process is a little easier than the first, since it depends on the level of control you want exactly." He placed the crystals on their hands. "Proceed, imbibe them."
Kael stared intently at the crystal. "Wouldn't this mean —?"
"Don't worry; Rek crystals will not increase the amount of your Rek at all. They are a neutralized version of Rek, existing purely to improve control over Rek."
The two found out that the task was not as easy as the master had made it seem. He watched over them as they strained and strove, endeavoring to split the crystal into its fundamental particles. Finally, after some hours, Ashviel succeeded to break of a single crystal, but the sensation it left him did little to convince him that he had gained any improvement in controlling Rek. Even if he were to break down the whole crystal, he doubted it would yield much anyway. 'If absorbing Rek crystals is this difficult, then how much more of a convolution would creating them be?' he shuddered at the thought.
He was still lamenting inwardly when Master Vauxall's words shook him. "There's not much I can do from here onward, except giving you the scrolls." He stood up and rummaged through a number of files, then extricated some papers from the stack. He gave it to them, and a bulky piece it was, and then told them to continue working on the crystals until they disintegrate it.
They neatly arranged it into their space pouches which they carried around under their clothes like wallets. For the first time in a long while, Ashviel thanked Master Vauxall for the opportunities he grants them. Kael simply smiled at the master, and then offered him a full bow as they stepped out of the room.
When they got back to their rooms, Ashviel quickly brought out the Rek crystals notes. His injuries were healing fast, but at the time being, he could not afford to strain his muscles. Magic trainings however, especially Rek crystal training, required more mental effort than physical. He embarked on an intensive study of the notes, while Kael went out to meet Smythe.
He found the boy alone at one of the training fields and ran up to meet him. Smythe quickly asked him about the spell, but Kael was more interested in the wind maneuvers.
"You can't learn the spell right now, but I suppose I can learn about how you dodge my attacks."
"Well, it is actually a technique; the meandering blade," answered Smythe.
"And you learnt if from Sir Ginx?"
"I was only able to grasp the basics, but Kyra understands it best. In fact, I'd suggest that you meet her, but she's quite cold. You will be lucky if that hoyden of a girl gives you as second look," he said, laughing at his own joke. "Though honestly, she's the best student in our set," he added.
Kael thanked him and went in search of the girl, finding her later at the library. She raised her head up from the book she was reading and offered a warm smile. He quickly explained himself, omitting the description Smythe had given of her personality. Like Smythe, she also asked about the spell and got a similar response, but unlike the boy, she pressed on for his reasons.
"You don't have enough Rek," he replied.
She stood up sharply, "Enough Rek?" She extended her arm and a large quantity of pure Rek crackled on it to the length of her shoulder. She increased the amount, such that it rose to the tall ceiling.
Kael sighed. There seemed to be no way about it. "Listen Kyra," he said in a whisper, "this is strictly between the two of us."
"What is?" Kyra asked expectantly.
Kael dipped his hands into his small pouch and produced the scroll on force Rek. Kyra suppressed a gasp as a twinkle appeared in her vermilion eyes. She could not say which of the two objects bewildered her more - a space pouch or a spell scroll. "You even have a space pouch!"
"And do we have a deal?" Kael inquired.
"We sure do," she replied with a radiant vivacity.